How to Tell If You Have Warm or Cool Undertones (With Easy Tests)

Understanding Undertones

Undertones are the subtle hues that exist beneath the surface of your skin. They remain consistent regardless of tanning, redness, or minor complexion changes, making them an essential guide for choosing clothing, hair colours, and makeup that flatter you naturally.

Unlike skin tone, which can vary from fair to deep, undertone defines whether your skin's base hue leans warmer, cooler, or neutral. Knowing your true undertone unlocks a whole world of styling opportunities and ensures your colour choices work with you, not against you.

Why Knowing Your Undertone Matters

Understanding your undertone means you can select colours that bring out your natural radiance rather than dull it. Wearing colours that clash with your undertone can make you look tired, washed out, or even older.

Thankfully, Curate Your Style offers online colour analysis that expertly identifies your undertone and full colour profile. Their approach ensures you make empowered style decisions, whether refreshing your wardrobe or redefining your personal brand.

Introducing Curate Your Style's Online Colour Analysis

With busy lifestyles and endless choices, finding your undertone can feel overwhelming. Curate Your Style simplifies the process with their professional online colour analysis service, blending expertise and convenience to guide you towards your ideal palette.

By understanding the core elements of hue, value, and chroma - and applying their knowledge to real people rather than abstract theory - Curate Your Style ensures that your personal colour journey starts accurately and beautifully.

Common Myths About Undertones

Before diving into the tests, it's important to clear up a few misconceptions:

• Myth: Pale people are always cool-toned.
• Truth: Both warm and cool undertones can exist across all skin depths.
• Myth: Only certain ethnicities have warm or cool undertones.
• Truth: Undertones are independent of ethnicity or race.
• Myth: You can change your undertone with products.
• Truth: Makeup can mask undertones temporarily but cannot change them.

Recognising these myths allows you to approach the following tests with an open mind and clear expectations.

The Key Differences Between Warm and Cool Undertones

Warm Undertones usually show hints of yellow, golden, or peachy hues. Those with warm undertones look radiant in earth tones like olive green, burnt orange, and rich browns.

Cool Undertones feature pink, red, or blueish hues. Individuals with cool undertones glow in jewel tones such as sapphire blue, emerald green, and cool berry shades.

Being able to recognise this fundamental difference is the foundation of building a wardrobe that elevates your natural beauty.

Easy Tests to Determine Your Undertone

You don't need specialist equipment or a trained eye to begin exploring your undertone. Simple at-home tests provide remarkably clear insights. Let's walk through the most trusted methods.

The Vein Test

Find a spot where your veins are visible, such as your wrist or the inside of your elbow. Look carefully in natural daylight:

• Greenish veins typically indicate a warm undertone.
• Bluish or purple veins usually suggest a cool undertone.
• Veins that appear to match your skin or shift depending on lighting may signal a neutral undertone.

If you find the colour hard to distinguish, move onto another test to confirm your results.

The Jewellery Test

Jewellery can be a surprisingly accurate undertone detector.

• Gold jewellery tends to flatter warm undertones, making your skin appear glowing and vibrant.
• Silver jewellery enhances cool undertones, adding a crisp, bright effect against your skin.

Try on both metals and observe which complements you better. If both seem equally flattering, you may have a neutral undertone.

The White Fabric Test

Grab two pieces of fabric or clothing: one pure white and one off-white (cream or ivory).

• If pure white brightens your complexion and makes your features pop, you are likely cool-toned.
• If cream or ivory is more flattering, your undertone is probably warm.

Hold the fabrics close to your face without any makeup and observe the overall harmony.

The Hair and Eye Colour Clues

Natural hair and eye colours often provide valuable hints about your undertone:

• Warm Undertones: Hair with hints of gold, copper, or chestnut. Eyes that are golden brown, hazel, or warm green.
• Cool Undertones: Hair that appears ash-toned or bluish black. Eyes that are icy blue, grey, or deep cool brown.

Remember, dyed hair or coloured contacts can obscure these clues, so focus on your natural colouring whenever possible.

How Natural Reactions to Sun Exposure Can Help

Your skin's natural response to sun exposure can offer insights too:

• If you tan easily with minimal burning, you may have warm undertones.
• If you burn quickly and struggle to tan, cool undertones are likely.

While this test is helpful, it should not be the sole determinant as various skin types may react differently to sun exposure based on other factors.

When Undertones Appear Neutral

Some individuals find that they exhibit both warm and cool traits equally. If this sounds like you, you may have a neutral undertone.

Neutral undertones offer greater flexibility with colour choices, but you will still find that certain shades flatter you more than others - often those that sit close to the middle of the warm-cool spectrum.

Exploring colours like teal, soft rose, and muted greens can reveal which shades resonate best.

Curate Your Style's Approach to Precision

Self-assessments are a fantastic starting point, but a professional opinion ensures complete clarity. Curate Your Style's online colour analysis service dives deeper, taking into account the interplay between hue, value, and chroma to deliver a tailored, highly accurate colour palette.

Rather than guessing, you gain a full spectrum of colours designed to enhance your natural features and simplify styling choices across clothing, accessories, and makeup.

Embracing Your True Colours

Discovering your undertone is more than a technical exercise; it is a celebration of individuality. When you understand and embrace your natural colouring, every choice - from a new lipstick to an investment coat - becomes an affirmation of your authentic self.

Allow colour to become a joyful tool for self-expression. By unlocking the secrets of your undertone, you open the door to a more confident, radiant, and unmistakably you version of beauty.